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In a booming global app economy, United States leads iOS App Store revenue growth, while Japan and South Korea drive Google Play revenue growth

Key trends across stores, countries and categories
Over the past quarter, Google Play has achieved higher growth rates than the iOS App Store for both downloads and revenues. While Google Play reached close to 90% of the iOS App Store downloads in Q1 2013, the iOS App Store maintained its strong lead in monetization, earning about 2.6x the app revenue of Google Play. In comparison, the multiple was roughly 4x for Q4 2012 overall.

Within the two app stores, several countries stood out for driving growth from Q4 2012 to Q1 2013:

United States was responsible for much of the growth in iOS revenues, while China proved to be an up-and-coming revenue contributor and also led the growth in iOS downloads

Russia was a key factor in Google Play downloads growth

Japan and South Korea continued to drive notable revenue growth for Google Play

Across all the countries mentioned above, Games remained the leading growth driver, even more so for revenue. By Q1 2013, the category had grown to cover approximately 70% of revenue in the iOS App Store and 80% in Google Play.

There were a few other top-ranking categories, however, whose gains pushed them higher in the category rankings:

Photo and Video apps grew to become the third largest in iOS downloads

Education apps increased in iOS revenue to become the fourth largest worldwide

Social grew in Google Play downloads to enter the Top 5 category rankings